


Interagency Cooperation

by welkinalauda (iiii)



Series: Salvaged from Tumblr [18]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-05 11:55:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20488478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iiii/pseuds/welkinalauda
Summary: More a setting than a story





	Interagency Cooperation

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The "Agents"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3729502) by [grey2510](https://archiveofourown.org/users/grey2510/pseuds/grey2510). 

The NSA spotted the Winchesters first.

Some D&D-playing mole in a Fort Meade basement dropped the right search terms onto the wiretap database, and there was John Winchester, habitual criminal, no fixed address and no apparent source of income, calling mild-mannered pastor James Murphy from a pay phone in Apalachicola for advice on dealing with Manticores. The mole figured out very quickly that conversation had nothing to do with Gary Gygax, and flagged the rectory in Blue Earth for closer watching. His colleagues eventually worked out that they weren’t plotting terrorism in code, either. Soon it became an office game to see who could be the first to spot and cancel BOLOs on black Impalas. 

Being the NSA, of course, they didn’t tell anyone.

* * *

It’s a tradition in the federal civil service that certain stories are only told after everyone’s had at least three drinks. Keeps the deniability plausible. DEA and ATF tell thoroughly pedestrian stories as though they were astonishing. The Coast Guard actually has the wackiest yarns, with the Forest Service a close runner-up. US Marshals have the widest variety. Customs has a very secure warehouse in Rhode Island they don’t talk about at all. (They don’t talk about it, but they will, with very little urging, accept permanent custody of certain sorts of goods from other agencies. Interagency collaboration at its finest.)

* * *

Clean up and cover up had always been a hit-and-miss patchwork sort of business. Then Congress created Homeland Security and promised them a blank check. Directors of various agencies took the opportunity afforded by the 2002 Ways and Means hearings on the black budget to quietly agree to a ‘consolidation and streamlining of function’. That’s bureaucratese for getting a commitment from the NSA that they’d start disgorging information in a timely manner, then arranging to bill Homeland Security’s budget to keep a specialized army sapper unit on permanent standby in Missouri for biohazard containment and other clean up, and to create an actual X-Files office.

The office game of cancelling BOLOs on black Impalas moved to Langley with the rules unchanged. Verifying the _bona fides_ of agents Joplin and Hendrix, on the other hand, entailed creating an entirely new scoring system, with points given for brevity and creativity, and double points deducted if the local LEO was sufficiently incredulous as to call back. 


End file.
